• Dzama

The Librarian

This appeared to be a case like any other- signs of scuffling, a strangulated corpse, a small crowd of well-dressed society-types wringing their hands. I’d been to these parties millions of times and always found out who did it in a matter of hours. Usually I’d still have time to share a drink with a debutante before hitting the road back to my corrugated hide-out in the desert.

Today, though, everyone seemed to be in on it and I had the uncomfortable feeling that I might be next unless I incriminated an innocent person, a young librarian named Melissa Fedslen.

I had an interrogation meeting with Melissa, a shy girl with dark-rimmed glasses. She kept smoothing out her skirt nervously as she answered the questions, hardly able to look at me in the face. I could tell she was about to be eaten alive by this lot so I told her to hide under a blanket in the back of my jeep while I did my final meeting with the family and their servantry.

When they asked what I’d found out I explained that they were right, the librarian had strangled their daughter in a fit of jealousy. I backed it up with some bogus clues I pretended to have found. I took their hundred dollars and drove away before one of them could strangle me, Melissa laying low in the back seat.

When I reached my shack I poured us some whiskey while Melissa took a shower. When I brought the tumblers into the bedroom the innocent librarian was nowhere to be found. Instead, I was met by Melissa, the psychopathic killer. She stood there, wrapped in a towel, hair still dripping, aiming two of my own guns at me. I set the whiskeys down and put my hands up.

After tying me to a chair and slapping me around a bit she strutted out. She took my jeep and left me to listen to the lonely winds blow against the corrugated metal walls of my shack and contemplate my terrifically bad judgment of character.

Copyright © 2008. All Rights Reserved.

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